Bain Capital’s private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base—including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s re-election. Government-worker pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain’s economic stewardship. Since 2000 [such] funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain. [Among them:]

• Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System ($177.1 million)

• Maryland State Retirement and Pension System ($117.5 million)

• State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio ($767.3 million)

• Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System ($231.5 million)

• Teacher Retirement System of Texas ($122.5 million)

Is Bain really a gang of corporate buccaneers who plunder their ill-gotten gains by outsourcing [and] euthanizing feeble portfolio companies? If so, union bosses, government retirees, liberal foundations and elite universities thrive on the wages of Bain’s economic Darwinism. If, however, these institutions relish the yields that Bain Capital generates by supporting start-ups and rescuing distressed companies, 80% of which have prospered, then this money is honest—and Team Obama isn’t.

—Deroy Murdock, New York Post

Behind the Curtain

Sometimes the mask slips, or falls thuddingly to the ground—and we are better off for it. In the first week of June, Les Moonves, the head of CBS News, attended a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Beverly Hills. He said that “ultimately journalism has changed” and that “partisanship is very much a part of journalism now.” The rest of the mainstream media shares Moonves’ politics, just not his candor.

—National Review

Foreign Policy Failure

The attacks in Libya and Egypt are more evidence that Obama’s foreign policy of appeasement and apology leaves us with friends that don’t trust or respect us and enemies that do not fear us. Obama has led from behind on Libya, Syria and Iran. Rather than an “Arab Spring,” we face a region dominated by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, and governed by Shariah law—while Iran patiently builds its Islamic nuclear bomb.

“My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy,” Obama said at the Democratic convention [recently]. A little more than four years ago, Hillary Clinton suggested then-Democratic primary opponent Barack Obama was so naive on the world stage he’d need a “foreign policy instruction manual” should he win. She produced the now-famous “3 a.m. phone call ad” that questioned his expertise and readiness for the top job. History has proved her right.

At the convention, Obama and his supporters reminded us that “Osama is dead, and GM is alive.” Well, now Amb. J. Christopher Adams and two U.S. Marines are dead too, and that phone is still ringing.

—Investor’s Business Daily

Home In on Domestic Policy

[Mitt Romney] and his supporters should drop the argument that if we don’t change our ways we’ll wind up like Europe. That’s a mistake because Americans like Europe, and in some complicated ways wouldn’t mind being a little more like it. In the past 40 years, jumbo jets, reduced fares and rising affluence allowed a lot of Americans, especially the sort who vote, to go there. The great capitals of Europe are glamorous, elegant and old, the outlands are exquisite. What remains of the old Catholic European ethic that business isn’t everything, life is everything and it’s a sin not to enjoy it, still has a lure. Americans sometimes think of it as they eat their grim salads and drink from their plastic water bottles. When Americans go to Europe they see everything but the taxes.

What Americans are worried about, take as a warning sign, and are heavily invested in is California. We read every day of the bankruptcies, the reduced city services, the businesses fleeing. California is going down. How amazing is it that this is happening in the middle of a presidential campaign and our candidates aren’t even talking about it?

Mitt Romney should speak about the states that work and the states that don’t, why they work and why they don’t, and how we have to take the ways that work and apply them nationally.